Wednesday, 5 March 2014

In My Kitchen - March 2014

In my kitchen, Autumn greets us with a fruit bowl of fruit and a vase of sunflowers. Sylvia has taken a shine to "yellow smoothies" with banana, passionfruit, nectarines, oats, chia seeds, soy milk and ice blocks. They are a great way to start the day, especially for a big school girl!

Sylvia will not have greens in her smoothies. I often add baby spinach and love it. A week or two ago I had some kale in the fridge and decided to try it in a smoothie for the first time. It was horrid. I felt like I was drinking a cup of cut grass. I suspect I probably added too much kale. No doubt I will try it again, but with much caution.

E prefers a cuppa tea to a smoothie. Being an ex-pat Brit, he is always in search of tea from his homeland. A recent purchase of Yorkshire Tea bemused him. The packet had the pictures of an English pastoral scene. Yet, the packet claimed that "Australia deserves a proper brew"! Huh! And he thought this was a quintessentially British tea.

E also loves a good pudding. Just as well. After Christmas I was in the supermarket and saw this pudding had been discarded at the checkout. Who could resist a Jamie Oliver Italian-style Christmas Pudding with panettone, limoncello, candied citrus peel and almonds! Then the weather was too hot for pudding. Finally at the start of February we tasted it. I found it too intensely citrussy. E enjoyed the rest of it over a few evenings with Maggie Beer's amazing Burnt Fig, Honeycomb and Caramel Ice Cream or vanilla yoghurt.

Our dishes pile up quickly. In February they got the better of our dish rack. These wooden dish racks aren't as common in the shops as they once were. Luckily E spied one in an op shop and we have replaced this one.

If only I could sort out my cookbooks as easily as our dish rack. I got Isa Does It for my birthday but haven't spent as much time with it as I would like. It is a beautiful book with lots of easy and interesting meals. I loved the Ranch Salad with potatoes and smoky chickpeas.

E has taken a fancy to a Japanese shop called Daiso. You can see a few of his purchases above Isa Does It. Oh so kawaii. He also bought these cute little containers for Sylvia. They are so small you need a dropper (at the end of the pack) to fill them.

For my recipe testing with Ricki Heller, I bought some Yacon Syrup (at Flinders Organics opposite Flinders St Train Station). On the shelf it seemed to say it was $17. Others had said how expensive it was so I wasn't too bothered. However at the cash register I found it was actually $35. Gulp! I bought it. Once. Possibly never again at that price. I did have an interesting chat with the shopkeeper and another customer about it. It is thick and treacly, and is both low in sugar and calories.

Lastly, here is our new cookie jar. We won it in a raffle at a school picnic. Sylvia was very excited. It is very cute. I just wish we had also won so extra room to store it.

I am sending to this Celia of Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for her In My Kitchen event.

Had to laugh at the yacon syrup, that was my reaction when I first started investigating the cheapest price. I think I got mine for $29 but I don't remember where. Terra Madre maybe? Anyway, would you believe I still haven't used it, even though I got it for Ricki's recipes. I look at it and think it's so expensive I have to make it last. By not using it, obviously. I love the Japanese stores, I went silly at JList once buying all the stuff for bento style lunchboxes. And as much as I love kale, in smoothies I find it urgh. I'd rather eat it raw in a salad.

Thanks Veganopoulous - I am keeping my yacon syrup for a special occasion too - it is the fear that I will finish the jar and really want more but not feel I can justify another purchase.

I used to go to a japanese store in Northland which sylvia and I loved but it closed :-( I keep meaning to visit Daiso but E says they don't have much in bento boxes and that is what I really want from a japanese store. Don't know JLIst but if it has bento style lunchbox stuff I might need to hunt it out.

I love the idea of big fruity smoothies. Yes, I imagine Kale could Kill a good smoothie. Why do new faddish products ( like the Yacon syrup) cost an arm and a leg and is it worth following the trends set by our American sisters to indulge in these overpriced products from so far away? There must be some locally grown substitute?

Thanks Franscesca - I can see why you baulk at these new faddish products. I bought it for recipe testing and out of curiosity but if it stays at that price it will not be a regular ingredient in my kitchen. I am happy to use other sweeteners (it even makes maple syrup seem like a bargain) but the diet covered in the cookbook (anti candida) is one where people can only have very limited sweeteners and this is why this one is used here. It is interesting to see how some new products take hold and others don't - will be interesting to see if yacon syrup goes down in price.

Sylvia has great smoothie tastes. I love kale in mine, but yours looks particularly green so perhaps it was the amount that did it! I also have to use my food processor for kale processing, which isn't as convenient as a blender.

You have lots happening in your kitchen, as usual. The new cook book and cookie jar are appealing, although I relate to lack of space woes. I also relate to yacon price shocks! Mine was $30 for the exact same jar, which maybe makes you feel worse for the extra $5, but it's certainly in the same ballpark (interesting that Perth is cheaper for once...). It may indeed be a once only purchase.

Thanks Kari - I think I managed to find the most expensive jar of yacon syrup in Melbourne. I only bought it as I had been looking out for it and not seeing it anywhere else (admittedly not an extensive search but I just don't have time for that). I half wish I had heaps of recipes using yacon and half wish I never had to use it because it is so precious. Re green smoothies, I found some baby kale the other day and wondered if that would be better in smoothies.

I reckon there's a very fine line between enough kale and too much kale in a smoothie. I only add about 3 kale leaves, but if I'm using spinach or silverbeet or rainbow chard, I can add a lot more greens. Maybe it's because it's much tougher and has quite a strong taste. Sylvia's yellow smoothies sound lovely!

Thanks Linda - I think the toughness of the kale was what really did it for me - though I think it affected the taste more than usual - I was a bit gung ho with the kale given I was just adding it to the smoothie leftover from one I was sharing with sylvia. I will try again with less.

Warning warning Will Robinson - Daiso is a dangerous place to shop! With everything at just $2 something, it's hard not to come home with a sack of "treasures'! :) And how odd is the advertising on that packet of tea? Maggie Beer's burnt fig icecream is amazing, isn't it! :)

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About Me

Recipes and reflections in which our vegetarian heroine dreams of being tall and graceful as a giraffe; being a goddess in the kitchen; and being gladdened by green gadgets, green food and green politics because green is the colour of hope. See About Me for more info.